Is MTV’s Jersey Shore a Terrific Trainwreck?

Thursday, December 10th, 2009

Jersey Shore is a new show focusing on a subculture that rarely takes the limelight on television, one populated by extreme personalities who call themselves guidos and guidettes. It has received a lot of heat for being offensive and racist towards Italian people. Some sponsors, such as Dominos Pizza and American Family Insurance, have pulled their ads from the show because of the controversy. In fact, UNICO National protested the show but this did not have an effect. On the other hand, some companies such as BeenVerified.com, a background checking service, have decided that Jersey Shore does in fact represent their brand and have  since become sponsors.

What do tweeple think of all of this? As the blue line in the chart below shows, the volume of chatter has steadily increased since the show previewed on television. Given the controversy surrounding this show, the volume of chatter will no doubt continue to increase.

What is particularly interesting is the sentiment trend. For the week before the show premiered, tweeple shared a range of opinions about the show resulting in fewer than 50% of opinions being positive. However, most recently, and after the show has aired, sentiment drastically increased and currently sits at more than 80% positive. It seems that the initial fears of racism were outweighed by the many people who seem to enjoy the peculiarities of the characters portrayed on the show. Time will tell how other sponsors react as the show increases its audience base, and more people are exposed to the controversy.

Zhu Zhus Zip Away

Sunday, December 6th, 2009

Years past saw Cabbage Patch Kids (adults will remember), Tickle Me Elmos (adults’ kids will remember), and other hot toys tempt the imagination and money of millions of people. This year is no different with Zhu Zhu pets, the electronic hamster that promises all of the fun without the mess, becoming the Toy of the Year. The toys were on people’s minds for a while, but as the chart shows, it wasn’t until early November that chatter volume broke through the noise and registered a blip in the Twitter stream. This blip reoccurred in the middle of November when the toys began to run out and consumers were attempting to find locations where they could still purchase the toy.

Despite the ups and downs in the volume of chatter, sentiment towards these toys has been near perfect reaching almost 100% positive every single week for a couple of months now. The low price-point is no doubt a major factor for their popularity in this economy. Notice, however, that just recently, sentiment has started to decline. This is likely the results of two factors.

1. The toys have sold out nearly everywhere and consumers are expressing their dissatisfaction with being unable to purchase them.
2. Concerns have just been raised that the toys may be recalled due to health issues.

We will be certain to track how sentiment changes as more is learned about whether there is a potential hazard. Stay tuned!

Obama’s War in Afghanistan

Friday, December 4th, 2009

The war in Afghanistan is being called Barack Obama’s Vietnam, with many ups and downs over the last couple of months. We took a look at what tweeple were saying when they referenced both Obama and the war in Afghanistan. The chart reveals a few interesting things.

1. Over the last three months, positive sentiments towards Obama and the war have been increasing. This suggests that people who are chatting on Twitter are feeling more positive about how he is dealing with this crisis.
2. A large blip in chatter volume occurred at the end of September and the start of October when controversy erupted over whether Obama should take a trip to Denmark to support the Chicago Olympic bid. Clearly, the fact that something as trivial as sports was getting more attention than something as serious as a war caused outrage for many, particularly when the Chicago bid failed.
3. The recent announcement that Obama would be sending thousands more troops into Afghanistan created another increase in volume accompanied by a decrease in satisfaction. Both pro and anti-war tweeple could express both outrage and approval with the combined message of sending additional troops and giving a timeframe for ending the war.

Even when the discussion is specifically focused on Afghanistan, other countries remain top of mind. Iraq leads the list representing 34% of discussions about other countries, and this is obviously because of the war occurring there. Pakistan follows with 25% of the mentions particularly in relation to stability of the region. In contrast, Vietnam has the third largest share of conversation with 16% due mostly to discussions about whether Afghanistan is “Obama’s Vietnam.”

Obama is dealing with far more issues than just the war in Afghanistan, each of which is just as serious. So stay tuned as TweetFeel continues to track the sentiment of tweeple about Obama’s performance.

Tiger Crashes and Burns

Wednesday, December 2nd, 2009

Well, not literally, but Tiger Woods did crash his car and he is getting burned! But what do real folks think of the whole situation? The volume of tweets related to Tiger had been relatively low prior to November 27 at which time it registered a 9000% increase. Even now, several days later, the spike remains, though only about 4000% higher. If that’s not statistically significant, we don’t know what is!

Sentiment showed a similar significant change as a result of the incident. Sentiment was hovering around 100% positive until November 27 at which point it suddenly dropped when people learned about the accident and became concerned for his well-being. Now, instead of nearly 100% approval, Tiger is dealing with an approval rating of about 60%. And that’s a big drop for someone whose income depends on consumer approval.

But as we all know now, it wasn’t simply his well-being that peaked our interest and kept us going. On day 1 after the incident, 92% of the chatter was focused on the car crash or accident. This quickly transitioned, however, such that by day 4, just 43% of tweets were about the car crash and 57% were about a supposed extramarital affair, perhaps the transgression that Tiger today announced he was regretful for. One can only wonder how will this impact his marketability.

The lighter side of this whole incident though, is that the drama brought us a fantastic set of new jokes. Here are just a few of our favorites. Enjoy!

• Police say Tiger Woods injuries are not serious, however he is feeling a little under par

• Maybe Tiger Woods should change his name to ‘Cheetah’ Woods

• What’s the difference between a Titleist and a Cadillac?? Tiger Woods can drive a Titleist 400 yards without hitting a tree

• What’s the difference between a car and a golf ball? Tiger Woods can drive a ball 400 yards.

• Tiger Woods is so rich that he owns lots of expensive cars. Now he has a hole in one.

• Hollywood is making a film based on this incident: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Hydrant

Come See Us at TWRTCON and 140

Sunday, October 18th, 2009

tweetfeel/biz is ready to leave the nest and we’re ready to announce it at two upcoming conferences.

First off is TWTRCON in DC on October 22 where we are a sponsor and will be running demos of tweetfeel/biz. Then, on October 27, we will be at the 140 conference in LA also sponsoring and running demos for attendees. Both Jean and Tessie will be there signing autographs as well so be sure to stop at our booth! They’d also love to give you a personal demonstration of how you can use tweetfeel/biz to help your business. See you there!

Like tweetfeel? Vote For Us!

Thursday, October 15th, 2009

If you think tweetfeel is so fun and easy that everyone should know about us, nominate us for best Twitter app! Just click on this button and tell the Open Web Awards!

Sentiment Analysis 101

Friday, July 17th, 2009

tweetfeel gives you a taste of it, but really, what is sentiment analysis all about?

At it’s most basic level, sentiment analysis involves reviewing messages or conversations and evaluating the writer’s opinion towards the topic. For instance, someone who tweets a message such as “I like Chuck Norris” is telling people they have a positive opinion towards Chuck Norris. On the other hand, someone who writes “Chuck Norris sucks” clearly has a negative opinion. After assembling all of the messages that mention Chuck Norris, one can easily bucket them into messages with positive opinions and messages with negative opinions.

But, the easy part isn’t so easy. First, one needs to determine which sentiments are positive or negative. Obviously, we’re talking automated sentiment analysis so we need some solid indicators for positive opinions such as words like happy, love, or delightful. Solid indicators for negative opinions would be words such as hate, stupid, or ugly. Simply coming up with that list is difficult enough, but some words just aren’t so easy to assign to buckets. For instance, is “Way to go” positive or negative? People often use this phrase in a positive way but in recent years, it has become a very sarcastic remark that one uses in a negative fashion. The written word is full of words and phrases that have contradictory, ambiguous, or sarcastic meanings. Humans can only catch about 85% of those which means it’s pretty much impossible for an automated process to catch all of them either.

Another problem with bucketing messages is that people don’t think linearly. If I say “I love Chuck Norris and football sucks,” it’s clear to people that I’ve messaged two distinct opinions about two distinct topics. Once you start getting into more complicated grammar though, it can become impossible to tell which topic was rated which way. Automated evaluations of the message have a much harder time differentiating the two. It’s a topic of great interest to academics and eventually, we’ll figure it out.

In the end though, it’s not about individual messages. It’s not about me and what I have to say. It doesn’t matter that your uncle Bob is always wrong and that your Aunt Mary doesn’t know who Chuck Norris is. It doesn’t matter that 5% or 10% of the messages are in the wrong bucket. What matters is the collective wisdom, the wisdom that comes from large sample sizes. When you average opinions across hundreds or thousands of people, the final answer is usually the right one.